


prelude

by timuzu



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, OC backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 14:52:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8213021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timuzu/pseuds/timuzu
Summary: we live, as we dream - alone.





	

**Prelude:**

No gates barred the entrance to Yharnam, or perhaps, as the gut feeling struck Lorieth, the way they took was not the front door of the city, but a hidden passage, a shortcut.

 

She was not surprised by any means, the White Clergy has been here before, and so did her father. This band of travelers prodded on, feet scraping the rough cement of pavement. They arrived in carriages and horses, all fifty of clergymen, with their heavy brass bells hanging low from their necks, and canes held aloft in one hand, a candled lamp in the other. 

 

Lorieth wore the Clergy’s white cape, that was all her affiliation with the White Clergy; she refuse to join their cult, if not for the search of truth, which she rather pass blame onto a scholarly interest with the blood disease.

 

_ The truth lies in your blood _ . And yet, after 8 years of searching, Lorieth found no answer in the aisles of library, with only the echoes of “Yharnam” and “Blood ministration” lodged deep within her memory, which when revisited, always left her with the last impression of her father. After her mother disappeared, and as Lorieth presumed, dead from the vile blood eating away at her sanity, the Truth could only be with the Clergy, and their secrets with the city of Yharnam.

 

The clergymen seemed to be heading to the centre of the city, winding their ways up stairs and alleyway. The buildings were old, but nevertheless impressive with their massive stature. The spires seemed to cut, and the onyx railings cold to touch. Yet Lorieth could tell that something plagued the city, there were conversations spoken in low urgent voices that stopped abruptly when they passed the window, low guttural sounds of something beastly snarling through the gutters, and most of all, the offsetting veil of lethargy and madness that seemed to blanket the city in its entirety.

 

_ It’s not too late to turn back _ , a part of her urged this more for than once, ever since they entered the city,  _ this place is dangerous.  _ But Lorieth pushed those thoughts out of her head,  _ if the truth is here, I will find it _ . Chagrined at her own cowardliness, she willed herself to walk on. 

 

**The Contract:**

She woke up lying down. Groggy and nauseated, Lorieth let her pupils dilate to the dim lighting of the room, and felt for the tingling sensation in her fingers. Dimly, as if off to a distance, the creaking of a chair and the strained ruffles of leathered clothes rang in her ears. She was aware of another presence in the room, but all her efforts to sit up proved futile, she could only perceive out of the corner of her eyes. 

 

“Oh yes, Paleblood.” The man who spoke appeared in Lorieth’s line of vision, his features hidden underneath a wide-brimmed top hat. He was old, Lorieth smelled metal and oil from him. 

 

“Well, you’ve certainly came to the right place” The old man rolled his wheeled chair forward and choked out a laugh, “Yharnam, is the home of blood ministration.”

 

The words rolled off Lorieth’s palette like bile, her head spun and she coiled from the candle light he’s brought closer to her face.  _ The Truth… _ She repeated and repeated again in her head,  _ Yharnam’s truth.. Mother’s vile blood... To find Father..., it is only necessary…..  _  But she couldn’t shake away the fear in her throat, it made her mute, and shameful. 

 

Still, the old man went on, “But an outsider like you, where to begin? To unravel the mystery that is this city” he laughed again, “Easy... with a bit of Yharnam blood of your own....” He sat right next to her now, the light from the lamp illuminating his face. Grey hair, a nasty scar running down his left eye, mouth hid behind a grey beard. 

 

It was then Lorieth noticed the high ceilings atop, the faint dripping of catheters, the vials shelved in cabinets, the surgical kits, the gurney all around her.... Fear crippled her now, it was becoming harder to breath, and she can only seem to hear the words  _ blood  _ again and again in her head. 

 

“But first,” The old man handed her something from the insides of his cloak, it was paper. “you need a contract.” 

\--

The blood transfusion made her numb, she lost track of time, and dreamed uneasy dreams while she lied in her gurney. When she woke, the man was gone, and she felt a strange invigoration burning deep, deep inside her arteries.

\--

 

**The Dream:**

The first time she struck down the beast, the smell of blood made her retch. The blood was sweet, pungent, and deviously alluring; she knew it was because of the transfusion, a part of her now inseparable from the Hunt. Still, she shuddered at the sight of the pool that has coagulated around the dead hound, sticky and dense.  She knelt down, brought the empty vial to the edge, and let the blood trickle into the bottle. 

_ Blood vials _ , a voice told her inside her head, _ you will find your strength within. _

Voices were not so uncommon now, voices and unseen ghoulish creatures that seemed to follow in her footsteps. The Yharnam blood did many things to her, it made her strong, agile, resilient, but it also made her cold; it froze a part of her that was once human, replaced by a bloodlust frenzy that she suspected was redeeming for the Yharnam Hunter. She ran her hand over the weapon again, a makeshift saw attached to a branch of sturdy wood, it felt right in her hands, safe, light, deadly. The pistol that hung on her hips was a comfort too, even though the notch was old, and the barrel desperately needed oiling. 

\--

“Are you human, or beast”

__

The woman before her simply nodded and made no reply. There was not a hint of fear in her eyes, even as Lorieth brought the saw cleaver to the nape of her neck. Looking at her, Lorieth felt an unanticipated rush of longing, it displaced her and she lowered her weapon. “You.. Do I know you.?” 

__

“Welcome home, good Hunter.” There was something oddly mechanical about the woman, her voice, detached, familiar, it reached for inside of Lorieth, holding onto a place where she has long forgotten. “I am a doll, created by hunters before you.”

__

“A doll..?” The realization blanketed over Lorieth, it made her soft, and she was- for a moment- content that the Gods have sent her such companion in the nightmare that she has stumbled in. 

__

“Yes” The Doll made a small bow. “I will watch over you in this Hunter’s Dream.” 

__

“I.. Thank you.” It was all Lorieth could manage, “I must apologize, for the earlier encounters.” Somehow she felt silly for conversing with the Doll, but speaking normally in another’s company brought back some of her sanity, it almost made her feel human again, and cleansed off the blood hunt. 

__

“Have you spoken to Gerhman? He awaits for you in the workshop” The Doll bowed again. Her gentle demeanor offset the horrid truth that is the Scourge, it made Lorieth sad. 

__

“And before you go, Hunter. What is your name?”

\--

**The Re-awakening**  


 

The reawakenings did not dull the pain of the killing blow that ended her. Lorieth could still feel the burn of fire on her skin, the cold metal of the pitchfork sliding into her skin, her muscles, her bones, the blow of axe to her skull.

 

Crushing, numbing, angry pain. She had thought the pain would fade to only a background buzz after a while, after she’d come to accept that she could never truly die in this nightmare. She was wrong, of course, deaths always hurt.

 

But the deepest wound would always be the choking fear flashing in her mind when she realizes death has come to take her.

 

Even after the hundreds -the thousands- time she had waken in Hunter’s Dream, opening her eyes at the end of the dark tunnel to bright lights, seeing the Doll before her. There was never once when fear did not visit her upon death in the waking world, it was always there, lurking deep in her mind- the amygdala. And Lorieth wondered, is it the really the fear of death? Or is it perhaps the fear, that she will continue down this endless loop, caged inside a hellish cycle of cheating deaths, but never living either.

 

The answer, although she never addressed, would be the latter.

\--

**Author's Note:**

> These were written in compulsion after each playthrough. more to come (especially when I get to the DLC)


End file.
